


Alien

by oroszlan



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Jason Todd is Red Hood, Lazarus Pit, Tim Drake has issues, Tim Drake is Red Robin, Tim Drake-centric, poor Tim, the one where Ra's wasn't about to let tim die, the one where my three murderbabies all live, tim drake and his squad of assassins, tim i'm sorry, tim is angry sorry not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-18
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-08 15:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14697165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oroszlan/pseuds/oroszlan
Summary: Invasive species (def):  any nonnative species that significantly modifies or disrupts the ecosystems it colonizes.or, Tim Drake didn't survive that desert alone. Tim Drake didn't survive at all.





	Alien

**Author's Note:**

> so i know i'm supposed to be writing sequels to mouth of a shark and what are baby witches called right now but i got hit by this idea and it didn't let go.  
> so! here we are. i'm a bit shaky on DCU canon but i'm figuring it's fine bc DCU canon itself is fucking nuts.
> 
> (also, owens, Z and Pru are all alive and ok, ok?)

Jason likes to think he’s having a good night, for him at least. There’d been some nice explosions earlier, and he had met a guy who had been very good with knives, enough to give him more than a little bit of a challenge, and he hadn't seen hide nor hair of a Bat in his territory. He’s turning his bike homewards when his communicator chirps, and for a minute, he considers ignoring it. No reason to spoil his night, after all, and he's sure there's another episode of Alias Grace recorded back in his apartment that he's been meaning to watch.   
And then it buzzes again, more urgently and Jason has the time to think, for God’s sake, because he’s not the type of monster to ignore it if there’s actual shit going down. He answers with a snapped, “Yes?” and turns his bike around, back towards the East End.   
He definitely should have ignored it, he thinks as he screeches to a sudden halt, bike protesting loudly. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, shaking his head. “Ivy got him with what?”  
“A truth serum, we think, although it’s probably got a bit more of a kick.” Dick repeated, completely serious, the sounds of Gotham PD barely audible in the background of his call. “Tim just - bolted.”  
“And that’s my problem why?” he asks, but with a sinking stomach. His Replacement isn’t the type to leave a job unfinished, stubborn to the last heartbeat by all accounts. He would never abandon patrol, and despite himself, he’s curious as to what secrets little Timothy Drake has that he would rather run than face them. Alias Grace can wait if it means he scores an embarrassing secret or two from the Pretender.  
He can hear Dick’s frustrated exhale and cuts him off hurriedly as he makes his decision. “If he shows his face anywhere around here, I’ll drag him back for you,” he says quickly before he can second guess himself and hangs up.   
Tim’s probably fine anyway, right?  
Tim, I-once-fell-asleep-in-the-fridge, survives-on-red-bull-and-coffee-in-the-same-cup Tim.   
Perfect Tim.  
He sighs in resignation as he starts his bike again.  
Was one quiet night too much to ask for?  
..  
He gets a lucky break in the form of a bald chick who walks out of an alley not far from where Dick had called him.  
Said chick catches his interest because she snaps into her phone “Owens, do not let him get out of the window! God, handcuff him to something again if you think it’s necessary. I don’t care! If he goes out tonight and kills someone you know he’ll never forgive himself!” while making a rather obscene gesture towards one of the dealers on the corner, before turning west, out towards Otisburg and away from the Narrows.  
Silently, the Red Hood begins to follow over the rooftops.  
The chick reveals a couple more nuggets of information as she leads him, (hopefully, god hopefully) to Tim, but he barely registers the information about low white blood cell counts and antimalarials and fucking flu shots.  
Going out of windows to fight is a limited skillset after all, he thinks to himself a few times.  
(Kill? He thinks once or twice. Perfect Tim would never, could never.)  
He rings Dick back. It’s a solid enough lead, after all.  
“I think I have something.” He says into the line before his brother asks. “Nothing certain.” He squints at the small duplex Bald Chick has just entered.   
“Yeah?” Dick asks, and his voice is tentatively hopeful.  
Jason really hopes this is it, one of Tim’s little boltholes in the city they all call theirs.  
“Yeah. Bald chick, pale, scar across the bridge of her nose ringing any bells?”  
Dick sighs in response. “Not straight off the bat, no. I’ll check the computer. Be careful,” he tacks on, more a command than an afterthought.  
“What exactly did Ivy say she got him with?” he asks, morbidly curious.  
Across the street, there’s movement inside the house, and he counts two, maybe three people.  
“She said it would, ‘strip away all his little layers’ in his head.”  
Jason wants to laugh, but Tim is practically composure incarnate and having that stripped away… He shivers involuntarily. Christ.  
The window he’s been eyeing opens, and a man with a mop of brown hair leans out, looking straight at him, before jerking his hand to say come in.  
“I’ll call you back,” he says hurriedly into the communicator, before shutting it off.  
Jason spares a thought for considering if it was a trap or not, but the guy looks pretty harried, and hisses, “Would you hurry up?” at him in a strong Welsh accent, so he goes, long strides quickly leaving him opposite the man, who introduces himself as, “Owens. You Tim’s brother?”   
Jason blinks in surprise behind the mask at this being so easy, and nods.   
“Good,” Owens sighs, running his hand through his hair again. “Come in. Pru’s less likely to kill you where Tim can see her do it.”  
Jason didn’t need nor want an invitation in, seeing as there was very little that was going to keep him out of the flat now that he knew his Replacement was here, but he slid through the window at Owens’ request, mentally checking over the small room he found himself in.   
“Want a cuppa?”  
No signs of a struggle at least, he noted, ignoring the question - and that was definitely Tim’s cape and cowl draped over the back of the sofa.  
He removed his helmet warily. “Who the hell are you?”  
Owens shrugged at him as he moved towards the kitchenette. “Tim hasn’t mentioned us?” he huffs a little laugh and puts a kettle on to boil. “Figures. We’re friends of a sort – he saved mine and Pru’s life in Iraq. If you want to go into technicalities, we’re in his service, so to speak.”  
Jason doesn’t quite know what to think. He’d been expecting to have to break into this place guns blazing, and now someone was making him tea and – “When did the babybird go to Iraq?”  
It’s Owens’ turn to squint confusedly at him now. “When the Batman was lost? Tim did his” he waves his hand in the air vaguely and Jason can physically feel his headache building, “detective shit?”  
Jason raises an eyebrow.  
Owens’ wilts, and he feels a little guilty. He seems like a good kinda guy, not to mention the rather beautiful scope he keeps fiddling with.  
It’s at this point that Bald Chick, Pru or whatever her name was, exits the small room at the end of the hall, leaving the door ajar.  
She doesn’t react to his presence, just slumps into a small barstool and rests her head on the counter, waving off Owens’ when he offers her a cup.  
“He’s a pain in my arse,” she grumbles hoarsely, and up-close Jason can see the insane amount of scarring on her throat. “Forgot to take his bloody contacts out, again.”  
Owens snorts and Jason adds that to the list of things He Did Not Know about Tim Drake.  
He rises and makes his way into the ‘room’ Pru just left, he can’t call it a room with a straight face – he’s seen bigger cupboards, for god’s sake – and breathes a little easier when he sees Tim sprawled on the bed, clearly asleep.  
“Hey, Bigwing?” he murmurs into his communicator. “Hood to Nightwing.”  
“Nightwing here.” Dick responds after a heartbeat. “You get him?”  
“I got him,” he confirms. “You owe me, big time. He’s sleeping it off, you can chew him out in the morning.”  
“Thank god,” Dick says, and Jason can feel him beaming from halfway across the damn city. “Hey, you know what?”  
“Goodnight Nightwing,” Jason says forcefully as Dick tells him it’s so good of him to be looking out for his little brother, and he hangs up before Dick can say anything else.  
Tim rolls over, and something catches Jason’s eye. He checks to see if Tim’s ‘friends’ are still in the other room before moving closer, frowning.  
The light from the street illuminated the Replacement’s head, and something is decidedly off. Different.  
He spots it in the next heartbeat and turns Tim’s head gently so he can see it better.  
Nestled in between the uniform dark roots is a block of grey turning to white where the dye has faded, and he can only think of a few reasons as to why Tim would have a streak of white hair so young. He doubts it’s stress, because surely it’d mean that Bruce would practically belong in a nursing home by this point.  
No, the little things are beginning to add up into a picture Jason isn’t sure he likes.  
Tim looks much smaller without the cowl and the cape bulking him up, just shy of actually thin, he realizes as he scrutinizes him.   
What happened when Bruce was away, he wonders, because Jason hadn’t even been in the city, hadn’t been around to see the fallout, and the Tim he knew before wasn’t the type to not go home, not to keep secrets, and here he was, half a city away from his family.  
“You could ask him,” Pru suggests from the doorway which she’s leaning against, startling him. “He wouldn’t be mad about it after, either. He doesn’t think it’s that much of a big deal, and you aren’t the one he’s avoiding.”  
Jason exhales slowly, shakes his head. He’s the black sheep of the family, sure, but he doesn’t think he wants to know this, doesn’t want to know what happened that resulted in the birth of Red Robin and the birth of this different, wrong Tim, who is frowning faintly even in his sleep. He doesn’t know what to do – if it was anybody else in this little fucked-up family of theirs they would be fine. Dick’d probably have fixed this already.  
But Dick isn’t here, Dick’s busy running herd on the demon-brat, and the only other person Jason would remotely accept to be near a potentially – jesus, a potentially Pit-crazed Tim, if he’s reading this right – would be Cass, who’s in Singapore and utterly unable to help.  
“We’ll be in the other room,” she continues, blatantly ignoring his little freakout. “Don’t uncuff him, he’s quick when he wants to be, and he’s not going out again tonight. If he asks you to call him JJ or Junior, you holler. Poor bastard got his head stuck in a multiverse blender once, and we’re still not sure how much of it’s still kicking around.”  
Jason squints at her – JJ? The fuck is going on in this kid’s life? – but she’s already disappeared back through into the other room.   
When he turns back to Tim, his eyes are wide open, and –   
They’re green, Pit green like he sees in the mirror every night, and Tim smiles, too wide with too many teeth, a spider inviting a fly into his web.  
“Jason,” He says, and his voice is slurred slightly, eyes flicking from side to side.  
Jason hesitantly moves closer, draws up a chair, despite every bone in his body screaming to run the fuck away right now.  
Tim’s obviously a bit out of it still, shakes his head every so often like a dog with an itch it can’t scratch. Occasionally he lurches forwards, reaching and twisting against the cuffs, and Jason winces on his behalf because that’s going to hurt like hell in the morning.  
He knows he shouldn’t be here, should call Dick back and let him take care of this. He shouldn’t ask Tim any questions, should just go –  
But his mouth moves without permission, and he says bitterly, “And here I thought I was special. The only dead Robin. Didn’t you know there’s only enough room for one fuck up in this family?”  
“Sorry. I know. Not my family, I know.” Tim replies, and there’s something not quite right in his speech, something hollow and Jason thinks, fuck Bruce for this. Tim’s a fucking kid, really, a kid lying here in this goddamned bed, and he doesn’t deserve any of this. “Sorry,” he gasps again, “So goddamned sorry, know that, didn’t mean to -”  
“Hey, hey,” and Jason lets his tone soften, brushes Tim’s hair away from his face. There is nobody here to witness this, nothing but the two of them, two ghosts in a safehouse in Otisburg. “You’re alright. You don’t have to be sorry.”  
Tim’s looking at him again, a bizarre mix of anger and madness that Jason knows still burns at his own core, deep down, and a blankness that can only come from whatever his been doped up with.  
He snaps his teeth at Jason’s wrist when he lingers, and Jason hums in annoyance, moving his hand back cautiously.  
“Ra’s dumped me in the Pit, did you know that?” Tim says, apropos of nothing. “He dumped me in, he dumped Prue in, he dumped Owens in, he dumped Z in. The four of us, the little fucked-up team who wouldn’t let the Batman die.” He pauses, laughs a little. “Thought I could have finally been at peace with everyone I failed and he dragged me back.”  
Jason exhales slowly, remembering to breathe slowly and evenly. The last thing Tim needed right now was for him to flip, no matter how much he wanted to track down that bastard and make him burn for doing this to another Robin, for fucking up someone as good as Tim.  
“But I couldn’t let Batman die. That was my job, Jay, always my job, I had to keep the Batman going until,” Tim’s breath hitches and Jason doesn’t want to hear this, he really doesn’t but he’s glued to his seat and doesn’t move a muscle. “Until he found someone better, found someone like Damian, or you. Couldn’t let him die, couldn’t let him kill, just had to keep him going, and I did my goddamned job, and what did I get for it, huh? What did I get but more fucking scars? I run his damn company, I never gave up on him and all I get is a lecture because I nearly crossed the line with the man who killed my father. I have given the Mission every last damn piece of me, given this damn family every last piece of me, and I didn’t get jack-shit back.” His breath is coming in short huffs now as he snarls out word after word, and irrationally Jason thinks of a wolf, hackles up and backed into a corner, ready to lash out. Vicious. Angry. It’s not how he could ever have imagined Tim, not at their worst, even when he nearly killed him – Tim has always been steadfast and level, calm and collected, and Jason wonders how long this has been bubbling beneath the surface.  
Jason wants to scream at this kid, scream at Bruce for somehow, somehow managing to fuck up a kid even worse than he had fucked up Jason.  
So he decides. He wants to know when Replacement started meaning Placeholder in Tim’s head, wants to know why.  
“Batman loves you. You’re his son.” he tells Tim, even as the words burn in his mouth like acid, because he died knowing the Batman, knowing that Bruce loved him and this poor kid didn’t even have that.  
“No,” Tim tells him, voice angry-mad-blank, and that in itself is kinda heartbreaking. “He never wanted another son after you, and he never got one.”  
“He has you.” Jason argues back. “He has the hellspawn.”  
“No,” Tim tells him again, in a tone that approaches pity. “Dami’s not his, he’s Dick’s.”  
Jason isn’t deaf, he can hear the blatant evasion and he scowls again.  
“They don’t even know you died, do they?” He asks, a bit softer. He is Jason, here, not the Hood, not Robin, not anyone but the boy who Gotham couldn’t let go of.  
The Replacement – no, he probably shouldn’t call him that anymore, and Pretender is definitely off the cards forever now – Tim, Tim frowns right back at him, shifting a little on the narrow bed, moves his legs like he’s going to try and kick him. Jason leans back just in case – Tim’s mean when it comes down to it, and he doesn’t want to end up with even more bruises at the end of this.  
“They don’t even know I lost my spleen, Jason, let alone about the Pit.” He laughs hollowly, teeth flashing in the low light. “That’s always been my special talent, you know? I was the Robin that could lie to the Batman. Dick was funny, you were strong and I was a liar.”  
Oh, Jason thinks faintly, because whatever Pru had been jabbering about earlier, anti-malarials and flu shots makes a bit more sense, because without a spleen Tim’s just asking for pneumonia or any number of things.   
“I remember Amsterdam pretty well. I thought I’d lose the memories, lose the time because,” Tim goes to gesture with the limb handcuffed to the headboard and snarls when he is jerked back, anger renewed afresh at the reminder of his confinement.   
“Pit madness,” Jason manages through a dry mouth. “It makes things sharper and blurrier at the same time. I know.”   
God does he know.  
“Amsterdam,” Tim continues, “Was insane, because we were all fresh from the Pit and Batman was there and we couldn’t let on, not even a little, had to lie and lie and lie. I was terrified, terrified of the man I spent two years trying to save!”  
“He would have helped you,” Jason hears himself say, and he can’t believe he’s in the position of defending the bat to one of his most loyal acolytes, him of all people defending the Batman, and he’s suddenly seized with the urge to double check that they are alone, that this isn’t some fucked up little test, so he paces to the window and twitches aside the curtain, gazing out onto the street.  
(He doesn’t know if he means, Bruce would have helped you, or Bruce would have helped you.)  
“Batman was prepared to tolerate a Wayne boy falling from the nest,” Tim corrects him after a heartbeat or two of silence in a sneering tone he’s only ever heard from the lips of high society socialites, the kind that used to say street rat when his back was turned. “A Drake is another matter entirely. He would have locked me up for everyone else’s safety and then he would have dug down to see what makes me tick.”  
Jason doesn’t turn round. He can’t look at the kid in the bed who is ever-so patiently explaining to him that he didn’t go home because Bruce would never have let him go as soon as he saw that deep-down Tim was just what the Pit made him, all cold crazed violence and not driven by Justice, by the Mission like he was supposed to be. He can’t look at Tim because deep down, Jason knows he’s right, because Bruce would have been left Tim in a padded room in Arkham, would have thrown him in, right next to the crazies that he’d spent his career as Robin putting behind bars.  
He wouldn’t make it two weeks, he thinks, and Jason belatedly realises he’s been gripping the windowsill with enough force to leave indents in the shape of his fingers in the wood. He relaxes his grip deliberately. Calm. He needs to be calm. He can go tear Bruce a new one later.  
“And you know what?” Tim continues, on a roll now, not caring how deeply he was cutting Jason with his words, and then Jason has to pull himself up short with that thought because Tim can’t help this, isn’t present enough to pull his metaphorical punches. “You know what the really fucked up thing is, is that I still love them, because I’m good at loving people who hurt me and people who leave me, because that’s all I’ve ever known ever since I was small, is that you love the people who hurt you. Steph left me with third degree burns, faked her own death, even. My parents, fuck, I could talk all night about that, how they wouldn’t stop leaving me, and they loved me. They loved me, so Bruce sent me back to that empty house night after night because they loved me so much that they couldn’t stay. You slit my throat, you nearly killed me twice and I still like you. Lynx has tried to kill me god knows how many times, was a gang leader who painted her streets red, and I broke her out of prison because she was good to me and I had forgotten how that feels.” Tim’s almost spitting with rage, green eyes luminescent in the dim room and all Jason can do is bear witness to Tim’s confessions. What could he say? That the all the Family was good for was churning out people like them, broken and bitter and angry, because Tim knows that, he’s sure, knows it down to his bones like Jason does.   
There’s a knock at the door and then Owens enters, ignoring the palpable tension in the air and the way Tim had moved as if he was going to physically lunge out of the bed. “How you feeling Tiny Tim?” he asks, settling down a small tray on the nightstand.  
“Little less feral,” Tim answers, a shadow of humour in his voice. “Still can’t stop talking though, no matter how hard I try-”  
Owens hums. “Z’s right then, he’s going to be insufferable, been rattling along the comm about time frames and half-lives for so long Pru’s just muted it.”  
Jason turns away from the window then, leaning his back against the wall and watches as Owens leaves again. He notes the scuff-marks on the floor which he hadn’t previously, that suggested Tim had already tipped the narrow bed, had fought so hard he dragged the damn thing with him. The lamp from the nightstand lies on it’s side on the floor, and almost in a daze he drifts over to it, placing it back upright.  
He turns back to face the bed quickly, wary of showing Tim his back for too long, but he’s drifting off, green eyes lazily slipping shut, nothing to indicate the now-apparent violence that lies in their depths, the anger that is usually buried so deep in their core. Must’ve exhausted himself finally, he thinks with a guilty kind of relief, because Tim was going to be as mad as hell when he realised what he confessed to Jason.  
Jason waits a couple minutes more, until he’s sure that Tim really is out of it, before padding softly back towards the front room.  
Owens is draped across the sofa, eyes closed, and Pru is perched on the kitchen counter. She doesn’t look up as he shuts the bedroom door and snags his helmet, absorbed in her phone.  
He pauses in front of her. “I – thanks. For taking care of him.”  
Pru shrugs, looks up to meet his eyes, Pit-green to Pit-green. “He’s one of us.” She sniffs back.   
What they really mean passes unspoken between them.  
You respect him and I respect you for that.  
Like we were going to leave our brother behind.  
(and even quieter, is this: he’s ours, now, and we take good care of him, and Jason agrees because Tim isn’t his to stake a claim on, because he had a snowball’s chance in hell in looking after him with the Bats breathing down his neck.)  
As Jason pulls away from the little duplex in Otisburg, he thinks that perhaps Tim has a chance with a family like that, a family that isn’t emotionally repressed and fucked up to hell and back.   
He begins weaving his way back into his own heartland that he’s carved out of this city, and silently wishes him the best of luck as he disappears into the night.  
If there’s anyone that deserves a family out of all the idiot bats and birds, a proper family, it’s Tim.


End file.
